Tuesday, April 26, 2005

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Assessing global environment

FOR the first time, a group of scientists has
accomplished the daunting task of evaluating the status of all
of the ecosystems on Earth, and the outlook is troubling.More
than 2,000 scientists from 95 countries participated in the
assessment commissioned by the United Nations in 2001 and
concluded that the environmental benefits that human societies
depend on and take for granted — basic necessities such as
food, clean air, potable water and fuel — are rapidly being
degraded.

“(The assessment) examines the state of the global
environment, but it’s more than that,” said Mr Harold A
Mooney, the Paul S Achilles professor of environmental biology
at Stanford University and co-chair of the assessment’s
science oversight panel.

“It relates goods and services that ecosystems provide
to human well-being. And surprisingly enough, that’s never
been done before.”

Funded by the Global Environment Facility, the United
Nations Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation,
the World Bank and others, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
programme also will evaluate future scenarios and give
governments and institutions direction that Mr Mooney
described as a consensus of the scientific community and a
synthesis of all available information.

“If you look at all the indicators of human well-being,
globally averaged we’re doing pretty well,” Mr Mooney said.
“But in the last 50 years, we’ve changed the structure of the
world’s ecosystems at a faster rate than any time in
history.”

The environmental degradation carried out to meet
demand for food, fibre, timber, fresh water, fuel and other
resources has begun to jeopardise more subtle services that
nature has always provided free of charge, he said.

Making matters worse, he added, the world’s poorest
people stand to lose the most from environmental change,
because they depend heavily on ecosystem services. In some
places, such as sub-Saharan Africa, environmental change is
the principal factor causing poverty, according to the
assessment.

The assessment represents more than a catalog of
environmental problems, Mr Mooney noted. By evaluating the
trade-offs that accompany decisions about ecosystem services,
it will identify priorities on local, regional and global
scales.

(The Washington File)

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